Goos

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Blue Goo - opposite of Grey goo. Beneficial tech, or "police" nanobots. The trouble with blue goo is that it could easily make too much of itself--and it's hard to clean up, even to replace with a later version. The idea of "Blue goo" was apparently invented in 1989 [link]; since then a lot more work has been done on how to stop gray goo, especially in this paper by Robert A. Freitas Jr. "Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations", and it appears that (for example) a full-blown worldwide atmospheric infestation can be cleaned up with a mere 88,000 tons of pre-built, non-replicating dragnet robots. [Alan Lovejoy; definition written by CP]

Gray Goo or Grey Goo - destructive nanobots See Star Trek scenario. Vast legions of destructive nanites. Supposedly created by accident, they are nano-scale or "atomic-precision" robots capable of precise, molecular control over chemical reactions, programmed to make unlimited copies of themselves, and capable of surviving and gathering supplies in a wide range of environmental conditions. Left unchecked, they would basically convert everything they touch into more of themselves, or consume and digest it for energy [ecophagy]. Either way, a gray goo would be bad news.

Green Goo: Nanomachines or bio-engineered organisms used for population control of humans, either by governments or eco-terrorist groups. Would most probably work by sterilizing people through otherwise harmless infections. [AS]

Golden Goo: Another member of the grey goo family of nanotechnology disaster scenarios. The idea is to use nanomachines to filter gold from seawater. If this process got out of control we would get piles of golden goo (the "Wizard's Apprentice Problem"). This scenario demonstrates the need of keeping populations of self-replicating machines under control; it is much more likely than grey goo, but also more manageable. See also LOR Goo and LOR Paste. [AS - Originated on sci.nanotech 1996]

Khaki Goo: Military Nanites; see grey goo. [AS]

Pink Goo: (humorous) Humans (in analogy with grey goo). Pink Goo refers to Old Testament apes who see their purpose as being fruitful and multiplying, filling up of the cosmos with lots more such apes, unmodified. [Eric Watt Forste August 1997]

Red Goo: Deliberately designed and released destructive nanotechnology, as opposed to accidentally created grey goo. [AS]

ÜBERGOO: A related term to grey goo, used (jokingly) to refer to the mistaken idea that during the singularity powerful technologies would decimate non-transhumanists, and that some transhumanists would see this as desirable (which is clearly against the Transhuman Principles). [Dale Carrico 1996]

LOR Goo: Lake Ocean River. See also LOR Paste (below). Nanites that both clean up and harvest the oceans, rivers, and lakes--gathering raw materials, such as precious metal atoms, and cleaning up spills, old waste, wrecks, and other dangerous sites. Cleaning the bad stuff also allows for creation of good stuff, such as more LOR goo. However, it would be hard to recover the goo after it has gathered the desired harvest, and a simple programming error could turn LOR Goo into Gray Goo. LOR Paste would be considerably safer, and LOR Goo should probably be made illegal. [uhf]